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OtherRealms Issue 21 Part 06
Electronic OtherRealms #21
Summer, 1988
Part 6
Something Old,
Something New,
Something Borrowed,
Something Blue
Alan Wexelblat
Copyright 1988 by Alan Wexelblat
Islands in the Net
Bruce Sterling
Arbor House, 1988, 0-87795-952-8, 348 pp
[*****-]
Hardwired
Walter Jon Williams
TOR, 1986, 0-812-55796-4, 343 pp
[****]
Prelude to Chaos
Edward Llewellyn, copyright 1983
DAW, 1983, 0-88677-008-4, 256 pp
[****-]
Starfire
Paul Preuss
TOR, 1988, 0-312-93056-9, 306 pp
[**]
Bridge of Birds
Barry Hughart
Del Rey, 1984, 0-345-32138-3, 278 pp
[****]
The Wave and the Flame [***]
Reign of Fire
M. Bradley Kellogg with William Rossow
Signet, 1986, 0-451-14269-1 & 0-451-14526-7,
358 pp & 382 pp
Islands in the Net
In today's parlance, "on the net" is a state of being; it describes
one's access to an electronic world of information. In the early
twenty-first century of Islands in the Net, "on the Net" has become a
fact of life -- a necessity for normal existence in the civilized world.
In this world, the power of governments is fading fast -- especially
since the signing of the Vienna Convention banning nuclear weapons.
Corporations are filling the power void, and Laura and David Webster
are rising stars in one of these new corporations, Rizome Industries
Group. Rizome is a multi-national conglomerate run as an economic
democracy for its employee/stake holders. Laura and David, middle-class
liberal post-yuppies, run a private resort hotel where the company's
employees and guests can meet and relax. Galveston encourages their
presence; since the collapse of oil, tourism has become a major
economic factor.
The Websters' peaceful lives are disrupted, however, when they are
asked to play hosts to a gathering of data pirates. These outlaws from
Grenada, Singapore, and Luxembourg operate by raiding the Net for data
which they sell or barter for a profit. They also fund a number of
extralegal activities, including drug-running and research in
unapproved technologies. Rizome has called the gathering in order to
see if it can reach an accommodation with the pirates and, more
importantly, to see if they can live with each other. Someone has been
blackmailing them, and they are all mutually suspicious. Their
suspicions and antipathy threaten the stability so necessary to good
business and Rizome wants to keep things under control.
When someone assassinates the Grenadian's chief negotiator on the
balcony of the hotel, Laura finds herself drawn into an explosive
situation. In order for Rizome's hopes to succeed she must beard the
lions in their dens.
I think Islands is Sterling's best book to date; I am impressed with
every facet of it. The future he describes is believable and very
well-drawn. Everything in this book could easily come to pass in the
next fifty years. There is a wealth of interesting detail that is
worked into the fabric of the story, instead of just being background.
In addition, all of the characters are three-dimensional people. From
Laura Webster on down to the supporting cast, each has a life of his or
her own. As a male, I naturally have an outsider's perspective, but I
felt that the females in the story were particularly well portrayed,
despite the difficulties this sometimes poses for a male writer.
In many ways, Islands is also Sterling's most cyberpunkish novel to
date. The standard c-word themes of survival in a hostile environment,
corporate power versus government power, bio-enhancement, and so on are
all present. However, none of them dominates the book; they are
presented in a low-key way that makes them seem very near; in Island
there are things I expect to live to see. He also avoids the problem
many cyberpunk authors have of making their heroes supermen and
superwomen. Laura, despite her growth and evolution through the novel,
remains a human woman, someone we can relate to.
The only flaw I could find was the pacing. It seemed uneven in places;
things dragged when they might have moved faster, whizzed by when I
wanted them to slow down. This is, however, a matter of purely personal
taste; you may find the scenes are paced just right for you. In any
event, I recommend this one highly, both for cyberpunk fans and non-fans.
Hardwired
There's formula cyberpunk, and then there's good formula cyberpunk.
Hardwired is pure good formula cyberpunk. The difference is whether the
author can made use of the formulaic elements or whether they overwhelm
him and the story he's trying to tell.
Walter Jon Williams takes us far into a cyber-future: the Orbitals have
used their superior position and technology to escape the rule of Earth
and in the process have shattered the power structures of the planet.
The war was deliberately quick and deliberately bloody; the rocks
raining from space cost many lives and left the survivors' morale
broken. Now the people on the planet live, if they live at all, with
one goal -- to escape the rapidly-dying surface of the planet and make
it into space. Meanwhile, the people in the Orbitals continue to milk
the Earth for all she's got.
Against this background, Williams introduces us to his two main players:
Cowboy is a panzerboy, a mercenary paid by the thirdmen to run cargoes from
one Free Zone to another across hostile states in his panzer (armor in the
original German, later associated with tanks, now applied to armored
hovercraft). Sarah is a dirtgirl, a bodyguard/assassin for hire.
Each has a private dream: Cowboy longs to fly again in the deltas --
advanced tactical combat airplanes. The delta pilots were to have been
Earth's main weapon against the Orbitals, but they were never given a
chance to prove themselves. Sarah's dream is simpler -- she just wants
two one-way tickets (for herself and her ungrateful, self-destructive
brother) off the planet and the dead-end life she has on it.
Their stories start off separately, but Williams quickly brings them
together, and the sparks really start to fly. The book is almost pure
action; written in the present tense, it's quite a trip to read. The
basic plot is simple -- in many ways it's similar to Damnation Alley --
but well-handled. Both main characters grow and develop, but they don't
do it by quiet reflection; they do it because they must in order to
survive in the maelstrom of action. The supporting characters are a
little less well-developed. They are better than stereotypes, but I was
disappointed that few of them managed to rise above the level at which
they are introduced.
The plot moves smoothly, if a bit fast, and is never predictable, even
though Williams doesn't conceal anything from the reader. When I read a
book, I enjoy trying to guess what's going to happen next. Each time I
thought I had Hardwired figured out, Williams surprised me. But in
retrospect, what happened makes good sense. I heartily recommend this
to fans of good c-word writing. For people new to the field, it's a
little tougher to judge. I'd probably suggest starting with something
a little less intense, then pick this one up once you're in the right
mood for a good light read.
Oh, and fans of Buckaroo Bonzai can have fun picking out the
references, which are liberally scattered throughout the book.
Prelude to Chaos
Many cyberpunk works have a vague or explicit post-holocaust feel to
them. Somehow government has collapsed or its grip on power has been
loosened, civilization has collapsed or seriously degenerated, and so
on. It's easy to just hypothesize such a breakdown; it's harder to
write a believable story showing how it might happen. However,
Llewellyn has managed just this feat. Prelude to Chaos is a first-rate
pre-apocalypse novel. Unfortunately, it's long gone from most
bookstore shelves. You'll have to hunt for it in the used bookstores
and half-price houses.
We start off in the not-too-distant future, in the last Federal
Penitentiary in the United States. With the availability of a
mind-wipe, the US Board of Psychiatric Assessors has been able to
return almost all malcontents to society as new men and women. However,
a special few have been able to maintain their sanity, commit crimes,
and refuse voluntary mind-wipe. For them, there is one remaining
escape-proof prison. One of these special cases is Gavin Knox, former
Secret Service agent and presidential bodyguard.
Knox was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of one of his
fellow agents who was supposed to be guarding the President. When the
assassination went down, Knox was lured away from the scene. Videotape
of the event has since convinced him that the it was the result of a
conspiracy, headed by the Attorney General and including Knox's former
coworkers who were supposed to be protecting the president. He did not
have enough proof of the conspiracy to prevent himself from being
sentenced; however, he is sane enough to avoid forced mindwipe and
dedicated enough to maintain his self until he can escape and gather
evidence of the conspiracy.
The other protagonist is Knox's fellow inmate - neurobiologist Dr.
Judith Grenfell. She too has been set up. During the course of a
routine lab experiment she discovered two extremely critical facts
about the most popular over-the-counter drug in the world. The drug,
Paxin, is sold under many names in many guises. It's basic function is
to stop cell division in certain types of cells, including egg cells,
so it makes an ideal birth-control pill. In addition, it does not harm
crops and so can be liberally applied as an effective insecticide.
However, it has the nasty side-effect of remaining effective in the
body far longer than anyone expected. Thus, the daughters of women who
took the drug are born sterile; their egg cells can never divide and
grow. In addition, the drug has a strong tendency to reinforce
obedience behaviors, from simple ones like stopping at red lights to
complex ones like paying your taxes. By the time Dr. Grenfell makes her
discovery, it's practically too late. The vast majority of the world's
women are already sterile. Nonetheless, she insists on publishing her
findings. Considering the havoc this is going to cause, the government
issues a gag order. When she hides her report in the NIH computer
system instead of turning it over, the government decides she must be
stopped and sets her up to take the blame for the murders of her two
equally-uncooperative coworkers.
In prison, Knox and Grenfell meet and plot their escape. They both have
a desperate need to get out of the pen without an enforced mind-wipe
that would destroy their memories: the Attorney General is still in
power, and Paxin is still being sold. Prelude to Chaos is their story.
Llewellyn's writing style is somewhat sparse. He concentrates on the
people and the action, relying on the reader's imagination to fill in
descriptive detail in many places. However, his characters do shine;
even the minor ones are convincing. And, as I said before, the best
part of this is the believability of the story. We are today subjecting
ourselves to thousands of chemicals with absolutely no idea how they
will affect us or our children in twenty years. Once you accept this
major premise of Llewellyn's, the rest follows like falling dominoes.
This one is definitely worth the effort of a back-shelves hunt.
Starfire
Paul Preuss has set himself a tough task -- write a story about the
near future of the American space program in the aftermath of the
Challenger disaster and the collapse of the space program. That he
nearly succeeds is a measure of his potential. Unfortunately, with this
sort of near-future speculative SF, a miss is as good as a mile.
Travis Hill is a Texas cowboy-type turned space jockey. A crew-member
aboard America's space station, he finds himself caught outside during
a solar flare. In order to avoid a dose of radiation that would ground
him forever, he goes against orders and becomes the first man to test
NASA's bailout system from the station. By a miracle, he survives and
becomes a national hero. However, NASA grounds him for failure to obey
orders. Denied the chance to do the one thing he's ever wanted, he
turns to the bottle and to the study of asteroids. When an experimental
spaceship, Starfire, becomes available he pulls enough strings to get
himself on board as a mission scientist and to get the starship
assigned the mission of examining a newly-discovered asteroid that is
falling toward the sun.
I found this book to be extremely tough reading. Travis is an eminently
dislikable character; he and his family embody everything I've come to
hate about Texans. The plot moves incredibly slowly after the initial
chapter. There are innumerable boring subplots about people who really
are of no consequence to the story. The supporting characters, particularly
the rest of the crew, are reasonable people, but they die at random
intervals for no apparent reason while Travis manages to survive.
Lastly, Preuss fails the suspension-of-disbelief test rather badly. Somehow
the Americans have managed to get a working space station and starship
while the Soviets (and, indeed, the rest of the world) are nowhere to be
seen. No reason is given for this reversal of current reality.
This is a book primarily for gung-ho Campbell-style space enthusiasts.
Those looking for more meat in what they read should give this one a miss.
Bridge of Birds
Once upon a time in in an ancient China that never was, there was a
village called Ku- fu. And in this village lived an unusual man named
Lu Yu, more commonly known as Number Ten Ox. Number Ten Ox was not unusual
for who he was so much as for the adventure he had. It seems that in
the Year of the Tiger 3,337 all the children of Ku Fu fell ill with a
disease no one had seen before. The abbots of the monastery were unable
to cure them. So Number Ten Ox was sent, with all the money the poor
villagers could muster, to find a wise man who could save the children.
The man he found was called Master Li Kao, one of the greatest scholars
of his age. Li Kao, however, had a slight flaw in his character. But,
he was all the villagers could afford. So, he and Number Ten Ox set
out in search of the Great Root of Power, which was the only possible
cure for the childrens' illness. Naturally, obtaining this root was
just about the most impossible thing under Heaven, which, by the way,
figures more prominently in this story than you might expect.
In fairy tales of any culture there's a certain mystic quality that has
to be conveyed. Barry Hughart does a wonderful job of conveying that
quality in Bridge of Birds. The whole book has a sort of fantastic air
that allows the reader to get lost in the story without worrying about
little details like superhuman feats or magic ginseng roots or
incredible coincidences. It also has a sense of wonder and respect for
the story that is being told. All this makes it a pleasure to read.
I am no expert on Chinese mythology, but it appears that Hughart has
done his homework well. The characters really ring true in their speech
and in their actions; this greatly aids the suspension of disbelief
necessary for a good fairy tale. The setting is exotic without being
alien -- a real relief for those who find themselves drowning in Celtic
and other western-oriented fantasy settings.
As with Prelude to Chaos, this book is likely to have disappeared from
the shelves of your local chain bookstore. However, a prize like this
is well worth the effort of a trip to a used bookstore or wherever.
Bridge of Birds will delight youngsters as well as adults.
The Wave and the Flame
Reign of Fire
These two books comprise the two parts of Lear's Daughters. Lear's
Daughters is the story of an Earth expedition -- in the unspecified far
future -- to the planet Fiix, home to the race called the Sawls. Fiix
is part of a solar system that is passing through the Coal Sack, a vast
nebula. This passage should have rendered the planet an uninhabitable
desert; instead, the Sawls survive in a narrow equatorial band.
Similarly, the computer forecasts of planetary weather seem equally out
of touch with reality.
The landing party want to know why, with the exception of the
prospector, Dr. Emil Clausen. He simply wants to find the deposits of
lithium his geological survey says should be present. Thereupon, he and
his corporate employers, Conplex, will both become richer. The fact
that the Sawls' lives and culture will be destroyed by this is of no
consequence. Conplex is paying for this expedition and should get a
return on its investment. The presence of the other scientists like
Stavros Ibia, the linguist, is merely corporate courtesy. Naturally,
the others do not see things this way. They would like to see the
native culture preserved and studied. In theory, if they can prove that
the native life is unique, galactic law will prevent Conplex's ravages.
However, the wheels of justice move slowly, while the wheels of the
mining machines move very fast.
The entire situation seems to hinge on the weather. The Sawls have an
unusual culture; with almost no metals, they have developed an
incredible talent with woods and ceramics. They seem primitive, but
they keep extensive records that go back thousands of generations. They
are deeply religious people, believing that there are two sister gods,
Lagris and Valla Ired. These goddesses are said to contend with one
another for planetary domination; their weapons are the weather. One
uses fire and heat, the other uses rain, cold and snow.
The priesthood believe that if one sister ever defeats the other, the
world is doomed; thus, they worship both, but pray for the underdog.
Even more unusually, they do not believe that the sisters live in
abstract places like heavens and hells, but rather are located in
precise physical dwellings at opposite poles of the continent.
The sisters' war is often characterized by incredibly rapid changes in
the weather. One such change wrecks the party's lander, stranding them
on the planet with no means of escape or of contacting the mother ship.
Since landing teams are supposed to be self-sufficient for months at a
time, no one on the ship will be attempting a rescue. The landing team
must move into the protective cave structures with the Sawls. The two
cultures must mesh as best they can. Fortunately, the Sawls are a
friendly, non-violent people, willing to share what they have.
There's plenty of potential story here. Kellogg and Rossow go to great
lengths to set up a realistic alien culture and drop realistic humans
into it. Unfortunately, the story never lives up to its promise. For
one thing, it's just too long. Things drag on and on; this is a three-hundred
page story, not a seven-hundred page one. In order to string things
out, the humans have to be incredibly dense at times. The reader knows
how things will end long before the action finally moves on.
The characters are also too simplistic. There's the good guy and there's
the bad guy. The others get to choose sides, though they mostly figure
out that the bad guy is a bad guy by two-thirds of the way through the
second book. Not that they do the logical thing and stop him from being
a bad guy, mind you. Instead, they have to depend on an unbelievable
deus ex machina ending to save them from their stupidity.
It's a shame, really, because a lot of nice work went into this book.
The aliens, as I mentioned, are particularly well-drawn; they are the
best characters in the book. There are also a number of convincing
scientific bits scattered throughout the books; I couldn't find
anything wrong with any of the scientific bases on which the story is
built. Unfortunately, this ends up hurting things -- it's so
blindingly obvious to us what's going on that it's downright painful
waiting for the characters to catch on.
The writing style is also uneven. Kellogg is all right as long as
people are moving and there's action to be described. But all her
characters emote in the same deep heart-rending way. After the fifth or
sixth such passage, they become hard to read.
It's hard for me to give a definitive thumbs-up or thumbs-down to these
books. There's a good story in them, but I don't know if you want to
sift through several hundred pages of mediocre writing to find it.
OtherRealms #21
Summer, 1988
Copyright 1988
by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved
One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights
are hereby assigned to the contributors.
OtherRealms may not be reproduced in any form without written
permission from Chuq Von Rospach. The electronic edition may be
distributed or reproduced in its entirety as long as all copyrights,
author and publication information remain intact.
No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way
without the express permission of the author.
